“A wise course,” Ethril agreed.
Adalwolf looked over his shoulder at the feeding cannibal lizards. “Nothing wise about it, just fear. I don’t want to end up like Joost. You’re the only one with any practical knowledge of this place. That means we follow you and leave the treasure hunts to the dead.”
Lidless eyes watched as the warm-bloods chopped their way back through the jungle. As the men vanished into the jungle, five shapes detached themselves from where they had hidden alongside the strange path. As they moved through the jungle, the scales that covered them shifted colour to match the fronds and grass they moved through.
As they emerged onto the path, the reptiles savoured the warm sunlight trickling down through the trees. For a moment, instinct overwhelmed the purpose that had brought them so very far through the jungle. The chameleon skinks basked in the warmth, feeling the heat invigorating their cold bodies. The chromatophores in their bodies relaxed, the camouflage colouring of their scales brightening into a dull yellow hue.
One of the skinks emerged from its torpor, stalking towards the lizard-covered carcass of Joost. The chameleon moved with an odd, swaying motion, each step of its tong-like feet deliberate and precise. It removed a long, hollow tube of bamboo from a sling wound about its scaly chest. Carefully, the skink prodded and poked at the grey cannibal lizards sitting on the corpse. There was small threat of danger from the lizards now that they had eaten their fill. Far from the ferocious swarm that had engulfed Joost, now they were slothful and ungainly.
The other skinks now joined the first, gathering around the gory corpse. With a darting motion, one of the chameleons seized a cannibal lizard in its splayed hand, popping the struggling lizard in it’s crushing jaws. The other cannibal lizards scurried away, but only for the few paces it took their tiny brains to forget what had frightened them.
The first chameleon extended his tongue, absorbing the scent of the dead man with the organ’s sensitive receptors. It was, as the skink expected, the scent he had been told to seek out. It was puzzled at first over the way the warm-bloods had failed to behave as expected. The answer, it realised, must lie with the one who smelled different and who had tried to dominate the others.
The skink bobbed his head from side to side, communicating the idea to the others. The warm-bloods were meant to follow the path. If the strange-smell was keeping them from doing what they were expected to do, then the strange-smell would be eliminated.
Soundlessly, the chameleon skinks withdrew from the body, vanishing back into the jungle, their scales again camouflaging their every motion.
The encampment on the beach was a rough cluster of tents fashioned from sailcloth and a somewhat more robust lean-to built from lumber scavenged from the ship. Captain Schachter had supervised the construction of the camp while the scouting party had penetrated into the jungle. Such supplies as could be easily removed from the Cobra of Khemri were brought ashore. The manner in which the ship was caught upon the rocks made it unlikely that it would sink, but Schachter was a man who didn’t believe in taking undue chances. A storm the likes of which had brought them to Lustria was unlikely too.
As the scouting party returned from the jungle, they were greeted by the unexpected smell of cooking meat. They could see a plume of smoke rising from a pit dug some small distance from the tents. Across the beach there was a great swathe of blood-drenched sand. Some distance from the scene of violence, the men could see a number of squat, sheep-sized creatures lounging in the fading sunlight, soaking up the last rays of warmth before the humid tropical night settled in.
Hiltrude and a few sailors hurried from the camp to greet the men as they returned. Van Sommerhaus gave his consort a lingering kiss as they met, his hands crumpling the velvet of her dress. The sailors leered lewdly at the display. Adalwolf turned and looked away. There was little in the way of passion in the patroon. Hiltrude was just another possession to him, something to lord over the rest of them. Like the lizards basking on the beach, van Sommerhaus basked in the envy of those under him. Adalwolf hoped he enjoyed himself while he could. Once the reality of their situation set in, once even men like Marjus Pfaff understood how unlikely their return to Marienburg was, all of the patroon’s promises of wealth and privilege when they returned to civilization would be as worthless as the man’s titles and airs.
“Schachter’s crew collected some bird eggs and a few shellfish. They killed some big lizards while you were gone,” Hiltrude told van Sommerhaus, shifting her gaze to include the others. Her eyes lingered for a moment on Adalwolf. “They came out of the jungle and just sat down and went to sleep on the beach. A few of the sailors went over and clubbed them over the head. They didn’t even put up any kind of fight. Almost like they’d never seen people before.”
“They probably haven’t,” Adalwolf said.
Van Sommerhaus let Hiltrude slip from his grasp. “More important, what do they taste like?”
“A bit like iguana,” one of the sailors said, his headscarf carefully held before him against his chest. “I sailed on an Estalian galleon for a few years, all up and down the Araby coast. Ate all sorts of strange things: monkey, bat, seal.”
Van Sommerhaus gave the man a patronising smile. “And what does iguana taste like?” he demanded.
The sailor laughed, then caught himself and forced solemnity back into his voice. “Well, it don’t really taste like nothin’. That is, you can chew it and all, but it’s like water really, where it don’t have a taste of its own. Not bad mind, and decent fare if you have the spices to liven it up a bit.”
The patroon rolled his eyes. “I will stick to the dry rations. You can have your water-flavoured reptile.”
Adalwolf caught van Sommerhaus’ arm. “We should save the dry food for an emergency.”
“My palate is too sensitive to be subjected to charred lizard,” van Sommerhaus said, brushing off the mercenary’s hand. “This threat against my stomach is an emergency to me.” The patroon did not linger to argue with Adalwolf. With one arm circling Hiltrude’s waist, he strolled down the beach towards the lean-to Schachter had erected for his employer.
“That man is bucking for a fall,” Adalwolf growled under his breath.
“No more than the rest of you,” Ethril cautioned. The elf pointed at the bloody sand along the beach. “Your men would do better not to slaughter anything so close to their camp. There are any number of things that could be drawn by the smell of blood. Not the least of which are ground leeches.” The elf smiled grimly as he saw Adalwolf’s ignorance of the creatures. “Each of them is longer than your arm and they move in a slithering army through the jungle. They can sense a drop of blood from a mile away. Once they latch onto flesh, they can’t be pulled or cut off. They have to be burned away and while they are being burned, they try to chew their way deeper into their victim. I’ve listened to swordmasters beg for death rather than endure such pain.”
Adalwolf licked his lips nervously and cast an anxious gaze at the jungle. “Marjus!” he called out. “Get a few of your lads together and help me cover up all this blood!”
Ethril sat upon one of the coastal rocks and watched the little encampment below. Certainly the humans had posted their own sentries, but Ethril knew full well how feeble the vision of men was compared to that of his own people. With everything else already stacked against them, the elf knew they needed every advantage they could get.
Watching the stars sparkling on the sea, Ethril could almost imagine himself back in Ulthuan. It had been centuries since he had last set foot in his father’s house. He had left with the bold words of youth, the pride of an elf determined to wrest his own glory from the world, to reclaim some of the lost wonders of the asur’s fading empire. Many lands had passed beneath his boots, years had fallen away like leaves from a dying tree. All they had done was to crush the boldness of youth, replacing it with the jaded wisdom of experience. It was a sorry thing to outlive one’s dreams. Perhaps, Ethril considered, that was why
the civilization of the elves continued to diminish and pass into history.
Four centuries of wandering and all he was left with was the homesick longing of the traveller for the places of his youth. He would see his father, see the ivory halls of their palace in Lothern. He would like to feel the crisp wind of Ulthuan against his cheeks again, to watch starlight sparkling from the waters of his own shores.
Ethril had decided he would not return to Lothern as a vagabond, dependent upon the charity of other elves to return him to his home. He had settled upon a plan that would bring him back to Ulthuan by another route. In Marienburg there were many men who traded with the elves, and many more who hoped to break into the lucrative market. It had been easy to find van Sommerhaus and play upon his hopes. Ethril was careful to make no direct promises to the man, leaving most of the details of their arrangement entirely to the patroon’s imagination. Returning to Lothern aboard a human ship was hardly triumphant, but it was better than returning as a beggar on an elf vessel.
A bitter smile formed on Ethril’s face. The storm had dashed that dream. He was lost more completely than before. The jungles of Lustria were a place he had hoped never to see again. He had watched them devour armies. He did not rate the chances of his ill-equipped human comrades very highly, even if they could clear their heads of idiot notions about treasure and fortune.
He had considered leaving them. Alone there was a chance, a small one, that he could follow the coastline southward until he reached the Tower of Dusk, the great port fortress the asur had built on the southern tip of Lustria. With the humans along, he was more dubious of their chances. Unless they were further south than he imagined them to be, well past the swamps of the Vampire Coast, there was small chance the humans could survive the journey.
It was strange, the elf considered, how he felt responsible for the humans. They were so shortlived, fragile as flowers in their way. It should have been easy to abandon them to their own foolishness, to wash his hands of them. Yet he knew he couldn’t. He was their only hope for survival. His intrigues had led them here, now it was his obligation to lead them safely out again. The lives of men were short, but the guilt he would feel for them would pain him far longer.
There was something more at work than simply the natural dangers of the jungle, however. Ethril had sensed some manner of terrible magic behind the storm, magic on such a scale that even the mightiest archmages would baulk at evoking such power. He had seen further evidence of such powerful sorcery in the jungle when they had suddenly come upon the pathway. None of the humans had been quick enough to see the pathway form, their attention gripped by the falling tree. Ethril had, watching as leaves and branches contorted and reformed into new shapes, as an invisible fist punched a trail through the steaming growth.
Something was stirring in the jungle, something with an interest in the Cobra of Khemri and her crew. Ethril could not decide if the force was malignant or callously indifferent. From what he knew of the amphibian masters of Lustria, the bloated mage-priests, he knew that whatever interest was being shown would not be benevolent. The cold-blooded slann were incapable of benevolence. Everything was simply a cog in the great mechanism of their minds. They would spend the lives of their own minions by the thousands simply to settle some question that perplexed them. If they displayed such indifference to the lizardmen, they would have no compassion for foreign creatures who stumbled into their experiments.
It was a slight sound, but it had Ethril whipping about, his sword in his hand. The elf’s eyes focused on the beach around him, on the rocks and the pounding waves. He opened his senses, trying to discern the influence of magic in the aethyr. There was nothing, only the crawling sense along the back of his neck that something was wrong.
Another sound. Now Ethril could identify it as a soft splash. He stared hard at the waves crashing about the rocks. Perhaps nothing more than a crab knocked loose by the waves, but somehow he doubted it.
Finally his keen vision spotted the incongruous spot on the beach, the place where the waves broke strangely. It was as though there was a delay in this one spot as the foam rushed up the sand. Eyes less sharp than those of an elf would not have been able to pick it out, to see the outline of a thin, humanoid body with a crested head and a long curled tail. The chameleon blended almost perfectly with the shore, but the chromatophores in his scaly hide weren’t able to keep pace with the rolling waves.
Ethril watched the skink slowly creeping towards him. He opened his mouth to shout a warning to the camp, then felt a sting against his neck. At once the muscles in his throat went numb, his breath becoming like burning frost as he drew it down into his lungs.
A second sting and Ethril’s sword fell through his cold fingers and clattered across the rock before slipping into the sea. The elf slumped to his knees, staring through cloudy eyes at the feathered dart sticking out of his hand.
The third dart struck him in the back. Ethril groped for it a moment before his numb body slammed face-first against the rock. Before he could slide off to join his sword beneath the waves, scaly, tong-like hands closed about him, lifting him off the rocks and carrying him to shore.
Ethril’s eyes had been sharper than those of any human. He had spotted one of the chameleon skinks lurking on the beach.
It was no slight upon his wariness that he had failed to see the other four.
Silently, the skinks bore their unmoving burden across the starlit beach. One chameleon lingered behind, a blowgun clutched in its scaly paws, its unblinking eyes fixed on the camp of the humans. When his comrades reached the shadows of the jungle without any stir from the camp, the chameleon replaced its weapon in the sling he carried and quickly joined them in the darkness.
CHAPTER FIVE
Return of the Skaven
The Black Mary swayed ever so slightly as her anchor plunged into the crystal blue waters of the little bay. Beyond the ship, the white sands of the beach glistened in the sun, shimmering like a field of diamonds. Past the beach, the trees of the jungle swayed and sighed in the cool sea breeze. A parrot, its plumage a bright crimson, squawked its annoyance as it flew above the beach, unsettled by the appearance of the big black ship.
The parrot quickly retreated into the trees when longboats were lowered from the sides of the brigantine. The deck of the Black Mary swarmed with foul life, verminous shapes cloaked in black, staring up at the sun with hateful eyes. They clambered over the rails, swinging down on frayed ropes before dropping into the lowered boats. On and on the ratmen came, crawling and scurrying until the boats sagged beneath their weight and water began to swamp them. Angrily, the bigger skaven threw their smaller kin into the bay until the boats rode the waves more easily. Clumsily, they fumbled at the oars, gradually pulling away from the Black Mary. As the skaven rowed towards shore, their displaced kin paddled after them, whining their displeasure to an uncaring audience.
Grey Seer Thanquol swam with the rest, his eyes glaring daggers at the last longboat and its cargo of skaven. All the leaders of the expedition had taken seats in the boat, by rights his place was there among them. Instead, he’d been knocked over the side by Shen Tsinge’s ungainly rat ogre. Oh, no doubt the sorcerer would claim it was an accident! He’d twist his tongue to some clever lie about how no insult had been meant! He’d pretend to be utterly innocent of any slight upon Thanquol’s authority and position as a priest of the Horned Rat and an invaluable servant of the Council!
Thanquol knew better. When he reached shore, there would be a reckoning! He’d show these Eshin gutter-lickers who was the master and who the slave! He’d teach them a thing or thirteen about respect! They’d go slinking back to Cathay with their tails tucked up their nethers when he was through with them!
Chisel-like fangs sank into ancient wood. Thanquol forced his anger to abate when he heard the staff clenched in his jaws start to splinter. The Staff of the Horned One was his most treasured possession, beside the warpstone amulet that went with it. He’d worked hard and
long to earn the right to carry the magical talismans, to bind their magic so that it complemented his own incredible command of the aethyr. His old mentor had been reluctant to give them up, and had taken an unreasonable amount of time to die when Thanquol did present his claim on the artefacts to him. Some grey seers simply weren’t gracious enough to step aside in their dotage and open the way for the young and vibrant.
Something brushed against Thanquol’s leg, something big and cold. The grey seer gritted his teeth—though being careful not to splinter the wood of his staff again—and began paddling a bit more quickly towards the shore. He pushed a struggling young night runner beneath the waves as he found his path choked with the swimming figures of Clan Eshin runts. The night runner pawed frantically as his head was pushed under, but Thanquol had already dismissed the whelp from his thoughts. He reached out and seized the tail of the next runt, pulling savagely on it and dragging the paddling ratman out of his path.
A sharp squeal of mortal agony snapped across the waves. The tang of skaven blood struck Thanquol’s senses and he twisted about. The night runner he’d pushed underwater was back on the surface—flailing about in the jaws of a monstrous fish. Thanquol’s eyes fairly bulged from his head as he saw the immense creature. It was all grey on top with a white belly and eyes as black as crushed warpstone. Its teeth were gigantic saw-edged things that filled its entire face. When it tightened its hold on the screaming skaven, its jaws actually shot forwards from its face before recoiling back into the leathery white mouth.
There was a mad scramble of skaven as the shock of seeing the great fish wore off. Knife-like fins were already slicing through the waves, drawn by the night runner’s blood. The ratmen had no idea what a shark was, but they could appreciate what they had seen the first one do. Snapping, biting, and clawing, the skaven flung themselves towards shore. One knot of cloaked ratkin swarmed a longboat, pitching its occupants into the sea. A cluster of them quickly surfaced, scurrying onto the overturned boat. A cloud of blood and a submerging fin showed at least one of their number whose scramble for the shore was over.
[Thanquol & Boneripper 02] - Temple of the Serpent Page 8
